WEATHER WARLOCK / QUINTRON - Occulting The Sun LP

Die cut jacket.
Highly recommended by Strangeworld.

Robert Rolston (Quintron) began work on the Weather Warlock (an analog synthesizer that interprets real-time local weather conditions into sound) in 2011, when it was included in the Music Box Project, a New Orleans art show devoted to structures that were also musical instruments. A second version of the synth was intended for commercial production and sale through Jack White's Third Man Records, but proved unfeasible. In 2013, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation offered Rolston an artist residency at Captiva Island, Florida, where the third and final version of the Weather Warlock was completed. Rolston tweaked the early version's harsher, abstract noise into more harmonious, oscillating sounds. Changes in temperature, wind speed, UV light, and precipitation control the speed and pitch of the Weather Warlock's drones. Live performances with the machine only take place at sunrise or sunset with Rolston and his fellow musicians improvising along to the randomly created sounds.